The Marriage of Melusine and Raimondin

The following is excerpted from a reply to the question: “What do you suppose the Sidhe offer to help us align with our deeper Humanity?” which was asked in an online class by the Lorian Association. ~ ed.

I have been aware of them (the Sidhe) for almost all of my life but direct work with them didn't really happen until I read John Matthews book on them (John is a close friend of mine). Contact with them came about as a result of a meeting a Sidhe woman who presents herself as Melusine of Lusignan and who asked me to work with the story of Melusine as a teaching and mystery story.

It is the story of the marriage between Melusine and the knight Raimondin but more deeply is concerned with the marriage between humans and Sidhe and contains within it many interesting possibilities of that marriage.

At the heart of it is a shared sovereignty and as a result of the marriage Melusine enables Raimondin to claim his land and she builds for him a magical castle. One of the interesting features of this story is the fusion of human into Sidhe that creates a synergy in which new life is created. It also shows us what happens when the human part repudiates the Sidhe both in the relationship between Melusine and Raimondin and also in ancestral life.

I first became aware of Melusine as a presence whose qualities were like water and starlight but feeling very substantial. She announced had come to work with me to create and affirm a new way of practicing the mysteries in effect an organic magic based upon the original conversations of the knights and the maidens of the wells.

 The conversations between us were not and are not word based; they are a coming together of opposites, my solidity with her fluidity, my boundaried nature with her capacity to include. The dynamic has both an attraction and a repulsion within it but if I can hold myself steady a threshold is crossed in which there is a fusion and in that place of union much is conveyed in both directions which later emerges in ideas, thoughts, images and actions.

 There were a number of key ideas that Melusine laid out:

Firstly, the Sidhe are profoundly related to human beings and are indeed cousins in fact are a branch of the human species that did not descend into matter in the same way that we did and so have developed differently from us.

In that development they have developed capacities that we have not and they have limitations that we do not.

They are beings of the imagination, are fully real and tangible and if we befriend them we will become also beings of the imagination as well as beings of earth.

This coming together of Sidhe and human she described as the bringing together of the sword and the cup in the practice of a new organic magic that drew its inspiration from the deep earth and the field of stars. A magic that enables flow and an ever deepening conversation with the depths of the soul and depths of the mystery that is the source of all.

The figure of Jesus and the Christ event is seen as important and as relevant to the Sidhe as to human beings. Her sense of Jesus was of a human being who had united the human and sidhe part of himself in such a way that he was the vehicle for a deeper quality, the presence of the Christ, which she sees as an awareness of love that deepens and multiplies the capacity of life to create itself: an anointing and consecrating presence which brings all into a colloquy of joy.

 One particular message that came through from her said this,

“We have our own relationship to the being you call the Christ which we experience as a radiant living field of emergence which produces a densification of experience for us and multiplies the possibilities of the expression of our being. The group of the Sidhe that I am part of co-operate with this being and are similarly drawn to working with incarnate human beings to enable what we might call the next step for both human and Sidhe. I call myself Melusine when I communicate with you not just because I am fond of making jokes about being the dragon lady( she is fond of appearing in a stylised Chinese half dragon half woman form as a way of getting away from tolkienesque images of the sidhe) but because the legends of Melusine point to the work of my group. The story of Melusine is an ancient human myth about the emergence of the new from the old and the marriage of the Sidhe and the human- it is also a story of loss and renewal and the old myth has much in it that can teach of you the work of my group and the need for humans and sidhe to embrace each other.

It is linked with the consecration of the land and the building of an inner structure which enables life to flow and bring life and fertility to all. The story leads us to Jerusalem and the work of the man you call Jesus who was for us a great nexus and point of union whose light shone in both worlds and who was with us even as he was with you. He was one who had made the marriage and had built the temple so was able to exercise a rare priesthood.

There are some beings among our people who are likewise anointed in this way who stand in white stillness and manifest the golden light of emergence- the marriage of opposites that appears in this place means the human must embrace our fluid immortality while the Sidhe must embrace death and mortality.

The work of Jesus earthed and made visible the marriage and quickened the life of all . A key aspect of his work, for us, was the tearing down of the Temple and the creation of what he called the temple of his body and the creation of the Grail cup which holds his potentised blood. This blood is the blood of union of human and sidhe that transmits the power of the living Christ or the energy of anointing and multiplication of the possibilities of emergence transmitted through the cup of his body.

This for us is the centre of his work and also that of Mary who brings to us the energies of birth and forms the container; she is the mother who nurtures the flame, who weaves it in and out of being. Mary is to us both human woman and vast ancient being whose deep stillness nurtures the flame of being. Mary is the cup containing the united blood and the Christ flame that manifests and communion with her enables the manifestation of the Graal within you.”

While exploring this idea she drew my attention to this alchemical woodcut from “Der buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit 1582 The Book of the Trinity" as a key to the whole work she is describing. It shows us Melusine and Eve holding together the Hallow of the spear which pierces the side of Christ and releases the healing blood. Behind the Christ figure is an alchemical furnace with 3 flasks and enclosed in a form that might be a flame or a drop of water. It holds for me the alchemical fusion of human and Sidhe and the bringing together of the Body of Flesh-the human with the Body of Dream-the Sidhe in such a way that we gain direct access to the Body of mystery-the Christ.

Ian Rees

is a psycho-spiritual psychotherapist practicing in Glastonbury, Somerset, UK. He has taught psycho-spiritual psychotherapy and Qabalah in UK Israel and South Africa Since 2009 he has concentrated on developing and presenting workshops for the Annwn Foundation. He has written 2 books on the Qabalah: The Keys to the Temple co-written with his friend Penny Billington and most recently The Tree of Life and Death, a study of the healing and transforming capacity of Qabalistic tradition.